Homemade Ecto-Cooler

Remember the sugary awesomeness of Ecto-Cooler? Now make it at home!

Ah, yes. The classic case. One of the most popular drinks of our generation. Aside of Crystal Pepsi, this is one of the most sought out drinks on eBay in all it's incarnations, but face it: You just can't get this again. At least, not in mass produced form.

Worry not, though. You've been dying to get some Ecto-Cooler to mix with your Crystal Head Vodka, and we at Ghostbusters: Chicago Division do believe we found the solution! Get those drink pitchers ready, we're gonna make some sweet, sugary awesomeness!

Most of these items are easy to find. To find the Kool Aid, visit Kraft's Product Locator and search for both the orange and tangerine flavors. For the Flavor Aid, I suggest here to find both flavors: Mix-And-Match Any 2 flavors of Flavor Aid - MyBrands.com

For the Tangerine Juice (If you don't wanna mash the tangerines yourself) Check Noble Juice's locator site to find the juice in your area: Where to Find Noble Juice at NobleJuice.com

1) In a 1 Gallon pitcher, start by putting in your orange juice and tangerine juice. If you happen to be using the Mandarin oranges as a juice source, be sure to strain the pulp out unless you so wish it.

2) After your juices are in, put in the packets of Flavor Aid and the 1/3 scoop of Lemonade mix and mix up the concentrate. The Lemonade is used to make the mixture slightly more bitter to give it the zing the original Ecto-Cooler had. You may have to adjust to get it to your taste.

3) Add water, put in your sugar and stir until dissolved. Again, if you're using Countrytime Lemonade, sugar is already added to the mixture so you might have to adjust for your personal taste by adding more sugar than the stated 1 1/2 cups.

4) Add your food coloring. The red in the Flavor Aid is deep enough to skew the color of the green, but with enough drops, you can make it green. It won't be that happy bright green we remember, but at least it'll be green. You also want to add a few drops of the blue in the mix to get it a more even green.

And that's it! We will admit, this is a bit of a pain to get it like this, but it is at least as close to Ecto-Cooler as we can get. Then again, even the ugly can have sophistication and taste.

Our team leader would know.

Be sure to visit us at http://www.ghostbusterschicagodivision.com

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Hey Dan my man, just caught you on Thatguywiththeglasses.com giving out some samples of your ecto cooler. I can post the link if anyone is interested... i havent had a chance to try and replicate the drink for myself but as soon as i get some free time im going to make a big batch and relive some old memories. Congrats on the great formula

I had an article on here a while ago about how to make an "adult" version of an ecto cooler. Of course mine was just Orange Lavaburst Hi-C with a splash of vodka and a few drops of green food coloring. Ok, so I cheated. But you'd be amazed to know that green food coloring still changes the drink bright green and not like a muddy brownish green.

Doesn't work that way. The red will be in there no matter what and that is what is darkening the green. If the drink powders were yellow, I'd just hit it with blue and let that be the end of it. Seeing that's not the case, I guess we'll have to live with it in this state.

1) I know Ecto-Cooler was more of a light green. Because Flavor Aid has red and yellow food dye in their powders, it makes it orange, making it hard to color the stuff green. Only thing I can say is it's the best you can do with store-bought materials.

2) Yes, we have testimonials from the Dog and Pony Show Website that states that it's incredibly close to the original drink's taste. It's slightly off, but then again, it's hard to gauge without a box of Crazy Citrus Cooler or whatever on hand to taste test and make sure we got it right. I mean, why check for a homemade recipe when you can just buy it from a store, right?

3) My recipe does not contain alcohol. At all. I figured, you want it, you gotta have it pure. THEN to mess it up with alcohol! Of the recipes out there, I was not impressed and was defiantly not in the mood for a bad hangover, so I did the math and used my brains to find pure childhood nostalgia in a glass. A tad dark, but still, full of playtime win.